'Perhaps instead of celebrating individuals it would be better to celebrate the actions that let their lives speak.' Photo: Alexander Milne Calder’s statue of William Penn, ahead of its placement atop Philadelphia City Hall (1894)
Room for improvement: Kate McNally’s Thought for the Week
‘Our heroes always have feet of clay.’
by Kate McNally
20th May 2022
The controversy around renaming the William Penn room at Friends House has produced many arguments. One of the common ones is that we are rewriting history. But there are no new historical facts here. We have always known that William Penn was an enslaver. The only new fact is that we now care.
